80 
ST. SELENA. 
just eight years after the “natives” became free men. They are a very 
quiet, tractable, inoffensive people, amongst whom crime is small, 
murder unknown, and burglary so little thought of that doors and 
windows of houses are not secured by bolts and bars, or even locks 
and keys ; their greatest vice is drunkenness, and their thieving 
does not go beyond mere pilfering of the poultry yard, the orchard, 
or the pantry. There is, however, one exception to this, in the 
partiality some few of them possess for stealing sheep, though it is 
invariably the case of the hungry man meeting the sheep without a 
shepherd, and if the sheep were better looked after by their owners 
this crime would soon disappear. They are very superstitious, and 
still retain some belief in witchcraft. My servant told me on one 
occasion that a man’s protracted illness was caused by an enemy 
poisoning his tools while he was absent at his meals, and that his 
recovery was hopeless until his enemy permitted it ; he further 
informed me that some few persons could reveal the image of the 
enemy in a bowl of water without mentioning the name, but that 
such was an expensive art. As domestic servants, when carefully 
and kindly treated, they are excellent, becoming closely attached to 
their employers, and exceedingly jealous of whatever belongs to 
them, but still they are as indolent as most inhabitants of warm 
countries. 
The negroes, or pure West Coast Africans, who constitute about 
one-sixth of the population, were introduced after the year 1840, 
when her Majesty’s Government established at St. Helena a court 
of adjudicature for vessels engaged in the slave trade and captured 
by British cruisers on the West Coast of Africa. The slaves were 
landed at Rupert’s Yalley, where an establishment for taking care of 
them was formed, and some thousands of the poor miserable creatures 
were there restored to health and strength previous to being sent 
on to our West Indian Colonies. Many of them remained at the 
Island as domestic servants in the first instance, and, very soon 
adopting the English language, the tall black hat, and the green 
cotton umbrella, became settlers also. They are a strong race of 
men, capable of doing any amount of hard work upon a scanty 
supply of food, and are very tractable and well-behaved until their 
jealousy is excited or passion roused, when, in a sort of momentary 
phrensy, they will commit crime even to murder. With the 
“ natives” they do not blend, but live apart in little colonies or set- 
